The Lab
The Lab is the twenty-fourth level in Crash, the Weird-Ass Indeterminate Mammal That Certainly Looks Nothing Like a Bandicoot. After his excursion through the headquarters of the second ill-thought-out Cortex-owned corporation in this game, Crash, the Weird-Ass Indeterminate Mammal That Certainly Looks Nothing Like a Bandicoot has defeated Dr. Neo Cortex's right-hand man, Dr. Nitrus Brio. And as you might expect, the defeat of Corcorcor's second-in-command means that our marsupial friend-of-a-friend is very near the end of his adventure, as is the case in most logically thought out entries in the series. (I'm looking at you, Crash Bandicoot: The Surprisingly Small Adventure!) His long long journey through the Wumpamuda Triangle has finally led him back to his birthplace - Cortex's professional science laboratory, the horrific hallowed halls wherein Mr. Primary Antagonist evolved both Crash, the lean mean crate-smashing whirly-gigging fighting machine, and Tawna, the industrial-grade cum dumpster. And, um, presumably many of his animinions, as well. Now, all that separates the Inter-Dimensional Dark Knight, Bandiculex, from the one other thing separating him from his goal is this hellhole, generally considered to be one of the most challenging non-side-scrolling levels in the entire series. Labby Cortex has flooded his Cortexxy lab with lots of weird shit. Electrical doohickeys! Doors, of both the trappy and more conventional untrappy varieties, controlled by ! Crates for some reason! All this, in these nightmarish corridors patrolled by Cortie's most elite minions: Particularly Vial Lab Assistants, Zap Assistants, and most terrifying of all, Confederate Army Secretary-General Blobert E. Lees! Flipping Through the Pages of the Developers' Diary: Fun and Exciting Factoids About The Lab, Some of Which I Am Positive You Did Not Already Know, Which Is Because They Are Obscure and Certainly NOT Because I Am Just Making This Shit Up, I Assure You! As I'm sure the Nobel Prize-winning Crashie Wiki has adequately established by now, each and every level in this game has a rich and extensive backstory! But few have such an obvious obviousness to the Crashie mythos as The Lab. It's where Crashie was born. It's the pre-climactic prelude to the anti-climactic hallway to the Uncle-Cortie-mactic fight for Tawna's freedom, and also, sexually appealing uterus. It reassures us, with its electro-powered gadgetry units, that Corcorcorcorcor does believe in his dangerous radioactive product enough to use it somewhere in his own castley home, as obviously stages like Lights Out and Very Slightly More Difficult Lights Out had left lingering doubts on that issue. And it finally reveals the full scope of Mrs. Primary Antagonist's primary antagonism - he engages in the truly depraved hobby of science, which is practically like legalized witchcraft or some shit! I blame the goshy-derned Commies. Well, anywaysters. It's a verrrrrrry important level. And as a level of extrrrrrrrreme importance, I'm sure you can imagine that its development was verrrrrrrrrry interesting! Or not! We'll see! Did you know? It's the only level in the entire classic series that had ! Crates do something other than simply make lame-ass other kinds of crates appear. (Only one other eventual game would have them serve such nonstandard purposes, activating traps in Crash Makes History By Letting a Tranny Join the Professional Mascot Kart Racing League for the First Time.) This unique trap was suggested by none other than Dr. Allan Becker! The inspiration, they say, struck him when he stole the idea from his Generic Black Man Acquaintance, who coincidentally is also his Generic Blind Man Acquaintance. Generic Whore Acquaintance and Generic Man-Whore Acquaintance agreed: the idea was golden, just like the sort of delicious shower that really doesn't help one get clean at all. (They all like bitchily advising him about his professional career, you see, despite the fact that they are all completely pathetic non-professionals, you see.) After his many hard hours of hard work implementing these brilliant puzzles, Beckerooni was shocked and, yes, also bitterly angered to see that his Naughty Dog co-developer-partner-mates really did not seem to care one way or the other. They completely disregarded his hard work, because they were all too busy trying to force the Mark Cerny to teach them how to have the sexually appealing uterus intercourse with the females of their respective species. The delightful puzzles in this stage were without a doubt Becker's crowning pinnacle of the excelsior peak summit of his video gaming career, and yet, ironically, the way the rest of the team ignored its brilliance led to his increasing cynicism toward his job - and he was already an unpleasantly cynical douchebag! - and ultimately to what is doubtlessly the de-crowning un-pinnacle of the not-excelsior anti-peak nega-summit of his video gaming career. It turned him into such a pathetic loser that he never even got to fuck Hattie Winston. Did you know? As The Lab was intended to be the most obnoxiously difficult level in the game (they underestimated the awful annoyingness of Sunset Vista, Slippery Climb, and Stormy Ascent, you see, because they are morons), the developers thought it would be hilarious to include a crude caricature of the most obnoxiously difficult person on the development team, Connie Booth, in the level. Specifically, an enemy that would parody her constant love of shuffling around the carpet in her stocking feet to build up static electricity, then shocking her co-workers while they were trying to do something important. What a fucking cunt, indeed. It seems that she soon found another hobby to keep her occupied, too - repeatedly deleting the data for the model for this enemy. Just to watch the developers squirm and work even more late hours to rebuild it, again and again! Their wives left them and they slowly starved to death, and it delighted her ever so much. Again, what a fucking cunt! Long story short, the model never actually was completed, so they ended up having to use the placeholder Lab Assistant model instead. And THAT, kids, is where baby Zap Assistants come from - from fucking cunts like Connie Booth. Did you know? Another enemy was awkwardly jammed into the crevassey crevasses of this level at the last minute, too! The honestly honest truth is that Confederate Army Secretary-General Blobert E. Lee wasn't the producers' first choice for the role of generic blob-type enemy in this stage. They initially intended to be cheap-skating cheapskates by using the same blob enemy present in the boss battle against Brio - Moderately Famous Zombie President Blobert F. Kennedy. Unfortunately, they soon found that Kennedy simply lacked the experience necessary to handle dual roles. Given the choice, Kennedy chose to be one of Cortex's lackey Brio's lackeys, so the development team was left to come up with a new blob-type enemy. Their first second choice was Literally Motherfucking Pulp Fiction Pioneer Blobert E. Howard. Howard was terribly enthusiastic for the role, but ultimately, his mother encouraged him to decline it, so he could focus more of his focus on his famous literary character, Conan the Blobarian. (Jason Rubin sympathises with having to give in to the whims of maternal figures, though he wouldn't say he wants to fuck his, per se.) They also briefly considered hiring Blobert, the Blob from A Boy and His Blob, but ultimately decided not to, as it might tip off the general public that their obsessive use of the "Blobert" pun wasn't even remotely original. Ultimately, Confederate Army Secretary-General Blobert E. Lee was hired for the sole reason that his belief in enslaving the Negroes was, the development team believed, a delightful counterpart to Mark Cerny's infamous belief in enslaving all women - including, but Cerny-tainly not limited to, the Shegroes. Did you know? The original plan was to have Cor-on-the-Cob delivering a lengthy, impassioned, extremely intimidating speech (presumably about how Crash is going to fail and die and junk) throughout the duration of the level. However, this idea was canned, not only because the Sony PlayStation's space limitations would have made this impossible and Blobrendan O'Blobrien's Cortie is pretty godawful anyway, but also because the development staff wisely decided that gamers simply wouldn't be interested in Cortex's Lab Oratory. Ha ha! Zing! Trivia *This level's name might be a sly pun on the fact that this level takes place inside Dr. Neo Cortex's professional science laboratory. Alternately, it is a sly pun on the fact that this level takes place inside Dr. Neo Cortex's pet Labrador Retriever, Scruffy. *The unpopular G4TechTV Canada programme The Lab with Leo Laporte was named as a sly homage to this, lame internet celebrity Leo Laporte's fifty-third favourite video game level ever. Like pretty much everything on anything owned by G4, the show had literally nothing in common with its supposed video game basis. *It is a little-known fact that this level's name can almost be anagrammed into "blithe", a dated word meaning "happy" or "cheerful", in delightfully stark contrast to the actual bleak nature of the stage. Naughty Dog has yet to answer my inquiry as to whether or not this was intentional. *In this stage, Crash has come back here, to his birthplace, to brutally murder the parties responsible for his delivery into this wretched world, a comical plot element later cleverly referenced in the fictional character Thickly Soupy "Stewie" Griffin on the animated television series Family Guy. This is not at all surprising, as that show's creator, Seth MacFarlane, often subtly references his admiration for the Crash Bandicoot series in public interviews. In a similar vein, his creation of the utterly horrible The Cleveland Show can be assumed to be nothing more than a sly and certainly very highbrow homage to the way that many recent Crash games, especially The World-Famous Mr. T Is Both a Racecar Driver and an Obnoxious Furry, For Some Queer Reason and anything released thereafter, are also utterly horrible. *It is never explained in-game how Cortex ever gets any work done here, with so many holes strewn about literally everywhere in this nasty little feng shui nightmare. The only logical conclusion is that he rides his hoverboard through his professional science lab, which has the added benefit of making him gleefully nostalgic about his very first job, rollerskating about as a drive-in waitress in the 1950s. All the cool jocks agreed that Cortex was Cor-sexy!